Author: James Wilt

With devastating hurricanes hitting the Caribbean islands and southern United States, massive wildfires displacing thousands in northern Manitoba and British Columbia and catastrophic flooding in India and Bangladesh killing more than 1,200 people, many Canadians are understandably anxious about what’s to come. Climate scientists have long warned that the intensity, duration

The race is on for electric vehicle supremacy. Last week, China — the world’s second largest economy and consumer of about one-third of new cars — announced it will set a deadline for automakers to end sales of fossil-fuel-powered vehicles, in a move that is expected to accelerate the global push

The summer of 2017 was an extraordinarily deadly one for North Atlantic right whales, a species already hovering on the brink of extinction. Investigations are ongoing into the cause of death of 15 right whales off the Atlantic Coast of Canada and the U.S., although it’s not too soon to point

In less than three years, Canada has to increase the amount of land and inland waters it protects by 60 per cent to meet a commitment under the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. The commitment requires signatories to legally designate 17 per cent as “protected areas.” Those can include

For years environmental organizations have called on the federal government to do something about the leakage of  billions of litres of toxic chemicals from Alberta’s oilsands tailings ponds into the Athabasca River every year. And for years they’ve been ignored — until now. NAFTA’s Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) is reviewing a

Indigenous leaders from northern British Columbia are calling on the UN to investigate whether ongoing industrial development of Indigenous lands and waters constitutes a violation of UN conventions this week. Canada is up for review by the UN International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. In a

Manitoba’s Progressive Conservative Premier Brian Pallister initially seemed very serious about confronting greenhouse gas emissions — a position that came as a surprise to many given the history of Canada’s conservative politicians sidestepping the tricky issue of climate change. The party’s election platform pledged to “work with the federal government and

The new B.C. NDP government has officially taken its first major step in attempting to stop the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline. On Thursday morning, it announced it will seek intervener status in upcoming legal challenges to the federal approval of the pipeline. The announcement helps to fulfill what was pledged in

Environmental organizations, labour groups and technology companies are calling on Alberta Premier Rachel Notley to take decisive action on methane emissions from oil and gas activities. Methane is a particularly potent greenhouse gas, with 25 times the global warming potential as carbon dioxide over a 100-year period. Methane is a huge

It’s been a full six months since Alberta introduced its economy-wide carbon levy and the sky has not fallen. In fact, unlike what many politicians and pundits were predicting ahead of the implementation of the $20/tonne carbon levy, the cost of gasoline at the pumps hasn’t spiked — and has in

If an ocean valley becomes federally protected but seismic work and offshore drilling is allowed in more than 80 per cent of the territory, is it really federally protected? That’s the question facing Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans, which is currently working on the final regulations for the 11,619 square

A massive open-pit copper mine might not be the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about solar power. But the construction of photovoltaic panels actually require a wide range of metals and minerals to build. Nineteen, to be exact, including silica, indium, silver, selenium and lead. Most can be

It’s not often that an article about climate change becomes one of the most hotly debated issues on the internet — especially in the midst of a controversial G20 summit. But that exact thing happened following the publication of a lengthy essay in New York Magazine titled “The Uninhabitable Earth: Famine,

Canada’s National Energy Board (NEB) has quietly stopped requiring pipeline companies to post the geographic coordinates of repairs, DeSmog Canada has learned. The federal pipeline regulator cites “public safety” as the reason for deciding to limit information on the specific location of “integrity digs” to examine cracks, corrosion or dents —

The massive “Canada 150” celebrations of July 1 are finally over, leaving little in their wake but hangovers, a multi-million dollar price tag and mountains of trash. But for some Indigenous peoples in Canada, the festivities remain a visceral reminder of their continued dispossession from ancestral lands and waters. That’s

After weeks of delay, the B.C. NDP has finally been asked to form government, thanks to a co-operation agreement with the Green Party. A key component of that now-famous NDP-Green “confidence and supply agreement” signed in late May is its commitment to “immediately refer the Site C dam construction project to

The future of Alberta’s sprawling tailings ponds is in serious crisis. As of right now, there is no clear understanding if or how oilsands companies are going to clean up the 1.2 trillion litres of toxic petrochemical waste covering over 220 square kilometres in the province’s northeast. On Monday, Environmental Defence